His Name Was Death (Dead Man's Tale Book 1) (14 page)

XVI

A Fresh Perspective

The dumpster skipped over the asphalt like a pebble on a lake, flipping and rolling as it went.

At some point, someone may have vomited.

I’m not saying who.

For a terrifying instant, it seemed the dumpster might come to rest top down, trapping us inside. With a final creak, it fell backward onto its side. We were spilled onto the ground inches from the nose of Robert Winston’s Mustang.

And I beheld an image of hell on earth.

The entire warehouse was engulfed in flames reaching voraciously into the sky; they threw forth an inky black smoke which effectively extinguished the sun, plunging the world into false twilight. A lurid orange lit the buildings around us, turning all objects into dancing demonic shadows on brick and mortar backdrops.

The window across the street was empty.

Our dumpster had dug deep gouges in the parking lot as it skipped along. The second dumpster had disintegrated in the blast, sending a rain of deadly shrapnel through the air. Metal fragments were embedded deep in the brick of neighboring buildings.

Caught in the open, we’d have been fried, crushed or cut to ribbons. If we’d parked even a few feet closer, the car would now be part of the rubble.

Karen struggled harder to catch her breath, no longer able to speak at all. Her aura
was
thickening, back to nearly three fingers’ width.

I looked around, wide-eyed, struggling to catch my own breath. My heart raced. I’d nearly been blown up, for God’s sake; those were words I never thought I’d say. Hopefully all the surrounding buildings were as abandoned as the warehouse had been, otherwise…

Karen reached for my arm, and I helped her to a sitting position on the hood of the car. The heat from the inferno was hardly bearable even at this distance, but she wasn’t yet ready to walk.

She waved the stack of papers in my face. She’d somehow managed to hold on to them through our escape and subsequent flight.

I tried to push the papers aside, far more worried about our immediate safety.

Karen pushed them right back into my face, insistent.

To placate her, I thumbed through the stack. It was a list with over a hundred entries. Each had three columns: initials, an address, and a check box. Most of the lines had been checked, but a few unmarked entries were scattered through the pages.

The list could be almost anything.

Perplexed, I held it out to Karen. “I don’t understand.”

She tried again to speak, but the smoke left her coughing and retching. Instead, she took the pages from me and flipped through, pointing out a specific entry.

On the last page.

Initials REW.

With an address in Green Lake.

Robert Eugene Winston, like so many others, had been checked off.

When I lie half-awake, not quite ready to open my eyes, I often feel that I’m not alone—as if a presence in the room is watching me. It could be early morning, or an afternoon nap like now. I know it’s only a figment of my imagination…a byproduct of an overactive creativity coupled with that anxiety induced by the darkness behind my closed eyes.

This particular time, my figment’s breath smelled of mint.

“Hello, Elliott.”

“Good evening, Michael.”

From the sound of his voice, my furry little advisor stood only a few inches from my face—on the back of the couch, probably. I’ve noticed that cats, by and large, have no concept of personal space.

Did I mention I’m a dog person?

“And where have you been hiding?”

Elliott cleared his throat before responding. “I have not been hiding. I have been…around.”

Real informative.

“Around, eh?”

“Yes.”

I opened a lid to give him my best, half-awake, one-eyed incredulous stare.

“Around where, exactly?”

Shifting awkwardly on four paws, Elliott dipped his head in his unique shrug. “Across the hall.”

With a smirk, I opened both eyes wide. “You’ve been slumming with the demon?”

Elliott mewed softly under his breath. “She has a name.”

“Oh, I know Emma’s name. I just didn’t think
you
did.”

The cat mewed, again.

“She’s been torturing you, I assume; meals of ground glass…tears of the damned?”

Elliott hesitated, reluctance plain on his feline features. “Fresh tuna and heavy cream,” he finally offered petulantly.

I didn’t bother with a response.

“You know there
is
a bed, right, Reaper?”

I smiled and remained silent. Honestly, I’d only intended to sit down long enough to relax my ankle.

At least I’d finally get a decent night sleep.

I hoped.

After a disgruntled huff and the third mew in the span of a few seconds, a new personal best, Elliott grunted loudly. “And where exactly have you been, Michael?”

“I’ll tell you over dinner.”

My culinary options were limited, as I hadn’t made it back to the Asian Apple. There was half a leftover gas station sandwich, which I split between myself and Elliott. He didn’t exactly turn his nose up, but neither did he attack his evening meal with gusto.

It was no fresh tuna.

With a smile, I told him my story.

The cat listened to the entire narrative without speaking, not until the very end.

“And where is Mrs. Winston now?”

“I took Karen home to rest and recover.” Her aura hadn’t thickened as much as I’d hoped. The waning of that dark red line marched on like the ticking of a clock.

Elliott studied me, his feline features an inscrutable mask. “You are driving around in a pale green Mustang?”

I shook my head, bemused. “Out of everything, that’s the one detail you focus on?”

Elliott dipped his head. “An angel of
death
, driving
that
car; you must admit, it is amusing.”

“Really?” I shook my head again. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

The cat sighed. “Uneducated lout.”

“Furry pain in my ass.”

For a while, we watched each other quietly over the pitiful remains of our dinner. It was Elliott who broke the silence. “What comes next?”

“I pick Karen up tomorrow morning and we start on the list.”

“So you mean to continue with this?”

I hesitated; this was my first chance to stop and rationally think about things since the warehouse. This game was clearly outside my league—I’d been called up to the majors without ever playing Triple A ball.

Hell, I’d never even played Little League.

I reluctantly nodded, while my heart flipped painfully in my chest. “I made a promise.”

A few actually: to Karen, to Robert, and to a nameless ten-year-old boy. I might choose to let myself down—hell, I’d done it plenty of times before—but not them.

“I do not suppose you were a police officer in your past life? Perhaps a solider, or at least an Eagle Scout?”

That was Steve, and before him, Dad. I shook my head slowly.

Damn, I could use Steve’s help right about now.

“No.”

The cat jumped down to pace along the floor at my feet. “The person you seek is an assassin, Michael, a professional. The evidence suggests they have killed close to a hundred people that you know about; I would suspect probably far more.”

Elliott stopped to face me, again sighing heavily. “Have you ever hunted
anything
, Michael? Even handled a weapon?”

I cleared my throat but otherwise remained quiet.

He resumed his pacing. “They are smart and
skilled
enough to repair an abandoned warehouse in secret, cautious enough to prepare a cataclysm to cover their tracks, and paranoid enough to pull the trigger on the off chance you might find something therein.”

I shrugged my shoulders slowly. “I’m not delusional, Elliott. I understand the odds.” My scythe materialized in an outstretched hand. “But I eats me spinach, and I have…” I pulled the handle through a wide, fast arc that whistled in the air, “
skills
.”

“Yes, very impressive, Michael.” Elliott’s tone wasn’t quite dripping with sarcasm, but close enough. “Your assassin has skills as well. Skills and a gun. And you want to bring a knife to his gun fight.”

“At least it’s a
big
knife.”

Elliott rolled his eyes without comment.

It was my turn to sigh. “I can’t just let this go.”

We sat quietly, both staring out the window as the sun completed the evening’s journey and dipped below the horizon. It was the end of another beautiful midsummer Seattle day.

Again the cat spoke first; his expression was unreadable.

“Please do be careful, Michael.” Elliott lay on his side, preparing to groom his fur.

For a moment, I felt a genuine affection for my four-legged companion.

For
just
a moment.

“Your death, after only a couple of days…it might reflect poorly on my competency.”

XVII

It Even Makes Julienne Fries

Three hours later, I stood on a busy street corner in the heart of Wallingford, once again an invisible skeleton wrapped in a pleasant and foul blanket.

So much for my good night’s sleep.

I’d spent all of about fifteen minutes in bed.

Across NE 45
th
, the major artery and business corridor through the popular north Seattle neighborhood, my red guide bounced happily among the older homes on 2
nd
Avenue NE, beckoning me forward.

For the time being I ignored it; something more important had caught my attention.

Dick’s Drive-In sat directly across the intersection, a major draw for University of Washington students on a warm summer night. Dick’s is a Seattle institution. It opened its windows to customers in the fifties, and it really hasn’t changed much since then. At Dick’s, you pay cash, you don’t make special requests, and you eat in, or on, your car.

And you always order fries, in gloriously greasy little white paper bags.

I worked at the Lake City Dick’s for two years in my teens, right beside Sarah.

But it wasn’t nostalgia that distracted me now.

It was anger, boiling red just below the surface.

Three women, in matching white dresses, sat on the hood of an eighties Chevy Impala in the Dick’s parking lot. The car was plastered with UW Husky bumper stickers to the point where the original color wasn’t visible.

I doubt the Chevy belonged to them; they didn’t look like local college girls.

The golden-haired teen gnawed at a Dick’s Deluxe. Her aged counterpart held a bag of Dick’s fries. Between them, the middle-aged woman simply watched the young crowd flow by.

All three pointedly ignored me.

Maybe they expected me to return the favor.

If so, I was about to disappoint them.

With the traffic light change, I limped across the street alone; young men and women, agitated without knowing why, hesitated to cross beside me. Three drunk frat boys started to approach from the far corner, screaming random obscenities at the tops of their voices.

As I reached the street’s center, they suddenly sobered and reversed direction together.

I wondered briefly how they justified the change in their own minds. Maybe if you’re a drunk frat boy, you don’t bother with trivialities like a rational explanation.

It might kill your buzz.

Or perhaps the repulsion of a Reaper in their midst was subtle enough that no explanation was necessary.

As I reached the Dick’s parking lot, a pocket opened in the densely packed crowd before me. Nothing overt, nothing conscious; a step here, a jostle there, and suddenly my way was clear. By the time I reached the Chevy, no one stood within fifteen feet.

A tall, broad twenty-year old with close-cropped hair and a hint of mustache danced awkwardly at the edge of the clearing. He wore a purple and gold Washington Huskies jacket, and his build suggested linebacker. The young man moved nervously from one foot to the other, looking longingly at the car while massaging a set of keys in his right hand.

The confusion on his face was thick, almost comical.

I felt sorry for him, but I had business.

It wasn’t me that picked the location of this meeting.

Grainy fog once again swirled about the women, only now I was close enough to discern the details.

Around the old, white-haired woman hung a cloud of death and dying, in perfect animated miniature. Old men and women, the sick and infirm, horrific accidents, suicides, blazing infernos, each in amazing detail only two inches high. As the life left each body, the scene vanished, to be replaced by another.

The graying, middle-aged woman sat amidst a dense cloud of chance encounters and lasting separations: long-lost friends and long arguments lost, first dates and last words, forged bonds and broken promises. She watched them all with a benevolent smile.

Around the blond teenager swirled a much more explicit cloud. Thousands, if not millions, of couples, threesomes and more-somes engaged in the heated throes of passion. Every place, position, shape and perversion was on display, unashamed.

It was like watching a train wreck—a jiggling, sweaty, moaning train wreck.

In high definition.

On a thousand screens.

I’m far from a prude, but it made me blush.

Without any obvious signal or warning, the three clouds vanished. My trio of white-clad stalkers turned silently, as one, to acknowledge me.

And here I thought I was creepy.

Whitey spoke first, snapping at me. “Shouldn’t you be doing something else, Reaper?” She pointed over her shoulder at my bouncing red guide down the street, without looking. It appeared to grow more agitated at her attention.

If a bouncing red light can grow agitated.

Gray stroked her elder’s shoulder, speaking softly. “Please calm down. We always knew this was going to happen.”

My oldest stalker grumbled in reply, “He’s not ready; he hasn’t figured it out, yet. Besides, we’re too busy.”

Blondie spoke next, her voice silky smooth. “Certainly we can spare a few minutes.” With the tip of her tongue, she lightly licked her upper lip while winking at me.

A warm flush ran up my neck and cheeks.

“Uh…” I mentioned intelligently.

Whitey snapped at her youngest companion. “In the parking lot? Have you really descended so low?”

Blondie responded with a wicked grin. “No one can see us.” Fingertips ran along her inner thighs in a long, slow, seductive line that suggested the entire world of carnal pleasure, without being the least bit overt or improper.

“Uh…” I bravely managed again.

Whitey stood, preparing a venomous retort, but Gray placed a placating hand to her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said to me, and her tone sounded sincere, “but it really isn’t time yet.”

The old woman nodded, jaw set. The youngest pouted petulantly.

“Please know that we are not the enemy, but your grave danger shall always draw our attention.”

Blondie slipped sensually from the car’s hood, pressing her body close to mine. She leaned forward until hot breath caressed my left ear. The tone of her whisper, if not her words, seemed to promise my every fantasy.

“Michael?”

“Yes,” I whimpered.

Something hot, rough and wet caressed my earlobe. “You should move.”

My body tingled at her closeness, driving me to distraction, blinding me to her advice.

Screams filled the night; a car horn blared.

My head jerked towards the commotion.

A bright red pickup truck barreled directly toward me, through the screaming mass of Dick’s patrons. Burgers, fries and shakes were thrown in every direction.

I froze for a panicked instant before diving backward, my ankle screaming in protest.

The truck missed me by inches, slamming into the sticker-encrusted Impala. A high-pitched, girl’s voice wailed from the crowd, “My car!”

I’m pretty sure it was the linebacker.

In the chaos, the white clad trio had vanished.

Your grave danger shall always draw our attention.

Was the truck danger, or simply a tool—a distraction to make good their escape?

Amazingly, there were no injuries in the crash; the truck’s airbags deployed, saving the driver. He was dazed, claiming the wheel had been yanked violently from his grip. Maybe he fell asleep, or was drunk.

Or, just maybe, he was actually telling the truth and something else had a hand in pulling him off the road in that particular time and place.

When it comes to creepy, despite all my shiny new gifts, I’m just a rank amateur.

The only casualty was the Chevy Impala which, it turned out, was actually red underneath the wallpaper of Husky pride; the linebacker sobbed uncontrollably over the wreckage.

I slipped quickly into the night, following my bouncing red guide. Without revealing myself, I couldn’t help, and that would only lead to a rat’s nest of awkward questions.

Besides, Whitey was right. I should be doing something else. My anger had gotten the best of me, distracting me from my night’s purpose.

And I’d gotten nothing for my trouble.

A number of blocks south of 45
th
, my guide lit up the front door of a small, single-story white house on the east side of 2
nd
Avenue. The street was quiet; no students wandered this far from the main drag. I looked quickly around, scanning for anything out of place.

From a window across the street, the three women in white closely monitored my progress. The blonde smiled, fingers fluttering in what I assume was meant as a cute, friendly greeting.

Your grave danger…

Shit.

My heart pounded loudly as I approached the entrance. Sweat made the scythe handle slick in my hands. I stopped, anxiety flaring, hesitant to proceed.

Red flashed incessantly around the door.

Damn it all to hell. This was my life now. Either I did my job, which
might
kill me, or I didn’t, which would definitely kill me.

Stuck between a hard place and a harder place.

The door swung inward at my request. A cloud of acrid blue smoke billowed from inside.

As the smoke reached me, I coughed violently. I dropped the scythe, which vanished in its own puff of black smoke, to pull the leather duster over my nose.

Moving cautiously into the house, I watched for flames.

There were none.

The smoke was incense.

Hundreds of sticks burned along the perimeter of a small living room. It had been cleared of all furniture. On the walls, large oriental symbols had been inscribed in red.

Thick, dark, flaking red.

A small Asian boy lay on a black cloth spread over the room’s center. His breath came in quick, shallow gasps. His skin was ghost white, in stark contrast to the thin black aura that hugged his body.

Chanting came softly from another room.

Puffs of black smoke, like hungry ravens, brought the answers to my questions.

The boy was Tommy Chen, twelve years old and fourth generation Chinese-American. The same thing that had stunted his growth was now killing him.

But then, it had been most of his life.

Desperate for a cure, Tommy’s father abandoned the modern medicine that was failing his son, opting instead for a hodge-podge of ancient Asian mysticisms and remedies.

I could see his cancer through the
Sight
; a large black lump consuming Tommy’s young heart and lungs. My summons came with that strange strength and authority, though I did my best to temper it. “Tommy Chen.”

The young boy’s soul crawled eagerly from his body to settle cross-legged at my feet. He looked up at me with wide-eyed wonder. “Wow, cool, are you really Death?”

I settled on the floor beside the boy. “Yes, Tommy, I am. One of many, I think.”

“Where’s your big knife thing? Can I touch it?”

His enthusiasm was infectious, and I smiled. The scythe materialized across my lap. “Sure.”

The boy reached out hesitantly, stroking the handle. Gold sparks jumped between the wood and his fingertips. “Awesome!” His expression quickly turned somber. “I can’t tell anyone, can I?”

I shook my head sadly. “I’m sorry, no. It’s time to leave.”

Tommy looked down at his feet. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

The boy pointed at the symbols on the walls, dejected. “Dad won’t let me.”

“Unfortunately, Tommy, it’s not up to him.”

His deep brown eyes flicked briefly behind me. “I wish you were right.”

I realized, suddenly, the chanting had stopped.

Tommy’s soul fled back into his body as an incoherent scream of rage filled the living room.

I’ve always been a thinker, not a fighter. My body lacks all those honed defensive reflexes that are so handy in life or death situations.

Maybe I should take karate or something.

Luckily, when it comes to saving your own ass, certain things are instinctual. I rolled sideways onto my back, swinging the scythe around to protect the length of my body.

None too soon.

Sparks flew as the sharp edge of a two-handed sword arched into my scythe’s blade, skittering to the side.

Seriously, a freaking sword.

The wielder was short, perhaps 5’4”, and Asian. His face was flushed bright red, his nostrils flaring; spittle flew from his lips as he screamed at me.

“Get away from my fucking son!”

Between us, I was significantly larger. Even as a fleshless skeleton, I was far heavier. I pushed hard against his sword with the scythe, destabilizing the smaller man, then kicked him back with my good ankle.